Written by Guy M. Richard |
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Instead of looking for perfection, we should be looking for any desire to pray, any desire to meditate, and any desire to obey—however small. We should look for conviction when we fall short too. Is there any remorse in regard to your prayerlessness or lack of attention to Scripture or to obedience? If so, be encouraged. These kinds of things are impossible without the Spirit of Christ, because apart from Christ no one will ever want anything to do with God in any way (see Rom. 3:10ff).

I want you to picture the scene: a pastor is meeting with a member of his congregation who has come to him seeking his counsel. The member has been struggling with assurance of salvation and is asking the pastor for help. The question uppermost in this member’s mind is, “How can I know for sure that God is for me and not against me?”
The scene is not unusual. Pastors get asked these kinds of questions all the time. The struggle for assurance is undoubtedly one of the most persistent struggles that many Christians will face in their lifetimes. But what would you say if I told you that the pastor in this scenario responded by saying, “The key to knowing whether or not God is for you is to feel Christ inside of you”? How would you respond if you were the one sitting in the pastor’s office, and this is the counsel you received? Many people that I know would be tempted to get up and walk out. Feelings are fallible. They can easily mislead us, and, oftentimes, they do. So, why would any faithful pastor direct his church members to feel anything within themselves?
Surprising as it may be, however, this is precisely the counsel that John Calvin—of all people—gives in his commentary on Ephesians 5. After devoting significant time and energy to unpacking the doctrine of union with Christ, Calvin quite unexpectedly says: “Let us therefore labour more to feel Christ living in us, than to discover the nature of [our union with Him].” It’s a statement that comes out of left field, as least it does for me. I cannot recall another place, off the top of my head, where Calvin speaks of feeling anything much less of feeling Christ within us. Quite simply, Calvin is not known for his “touchy-feely” demeanor, convictions, or counsel. This statement sounds more like what we would hear from a pastor or ministry leader in the 21st century than in the 16th century. What is Calvin trying to say here? And what does it mean to “labour…to feel Christ living in us”?
What is Calvin saying?
The first thing that Calvin has in mind here is the mysterious nature of our union with Christ. It is “mysterious” not because we don’t know anything at all about it but because, as AA Hodge once said, “it so far transcends all the analogies of earthly relationships, in the intimacy of its connection, in the transforming power of its influence, and in the excellence of its consequences.” Rather than seeking to understand how Christ is “in us” or what it really means, we should instead, according to Calvin, focus upon other things that are less mysterious. And Calvin believes that feeling Christ within us is at least one of things that qualifies.
The second idea that Calvin has in mind in encouraging us to feel Christ within us is the fruitfulness of our union with Him. When the apostle Paul says that “Christ in [us]” is “the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27), he is highlighting the transformation that union with Christ produces within every believer. To have Jesus within us is to have something that we didn’t have before: namely, hope. That hope represents an experiential change within the believer; it is something that we can see and feel, generally speaking. Every Christian may well undergo seasons in which that hope is veiled, but that should be the exception rather than the rule. Being a Christian means having Christ within us, and having Christ within us means that we have hope.
Paul speaks more explicitly about the transformation we experience in Romans 8:9-11, which says:
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
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The best way to destroy groupthink is by learning to think for ourselves and in the words of Paul “being transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Rom.12:2). What a difference it would make if all Christians stood up against the lies that our society is being built upon! We would turn the world upside down!

Two Minutes Hate
In the novel Orwell describes the Two Minutes Hate—a daily public period in which the citizens of Oceania watch a film showing Emmanuel Goldstein, the main enemy of the State, and his Brotherhood. They are encouraged to show their hate for him and their love for Big Brother. Orwell’s picture is a masterful description of group psychology—what he calls groupthink. It shows how people can transfer their own anxieties and anger on to an external enemy (who doesn’t really exist), and thus diverts them from questioning The Party—the governing authorities. In this way The Party can deal with thoughtcrime and thoughtcriminals.
The Right Side of History
Whilst not quite as explicit as in Orwell’s dystopian novel, modern liberal ‘soft’ authoritarianism has developed a similar if somewhat more sophisticated technique. We are constantly being invited to join the groupthink and be ‘on the right side of history’. I think of the medical worker who went to work only to have their regular LGBTQI+ day—where a lecture was given on the necessity of correct pronouns. Everyone sat round and nodded. No one dared question. Even more so, no one dared not to be seen to be affirming. Everyone had to wear the symbol. After all you don’t want to be excluded for not being inclusive! But what is even more chilling is that increasingly ‘the enemy’ is being named. Those bigots. Those phobes! Usually religious, but not of course Islam—the religion of peace, which can never be portrayed in any other way than positive! This discrimination will soon lead to anger and hatred—when the promised Brave New World is not delivered by all our diversity and equality training. Someone must be to blame.
This scenario is repeated in countless government departments, school, universities and corporations—especially those who have appointed ‘equality and diversity’ officers under the watchful eye of Stonewall. In Australia there are 25,000 trans people in the whole country—that is 0.01% of the population. But for that 0.1% we have to have special days at work and school, we have to destroy women’s sport and we have to cancel anyone who dares to question the ideology.
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Under theonomy…the implementation of all the old covenant death penalties was not supposed to occur until the culture had been spiritually conquered through spiritual means. That spiritual conquest was either temporally distant or strictly hypothetical, depending on the optimism of one’s eschatology.

A label can be confusing when its meaning changes over time. This may have happened with the term “theonomy” in Christian ethics. Many today think that theonomy teaches a flat application of all the penal codes found in Old Testament judicial laws. I learned a different definition over four decades ago when I studied under Greg Bahnsen. I was then taught that the Mosaic judicial laws are time bound, situation specific applications of the moral law to a particular culture at a particular point in redemptive history. We were to take from these particular applications general principles that we could then apply to our own time and place. The example repeatedly given was the Mosaic requirement to put a railing around the roof of a house (Deuteronomy 22:8). This judicial law applied directly to that time and place because houses then usually had a flat roof which was often used as a living space. It does not directly apply to today’s houses with sloped roofs that are never used as a living space. Yet we can deduce from the general principle behind this judicial law that the civil magistrate today has an obligation to require certain safety measures. Examples would be safety belts for cars, helmets for motorcyclists and railings for balconies and stairs. The risk of falling off a flat roof living space also serves as an approximate guide as to what degree of risk to life merits a legal regulation.
I was also then taught that the coercive power of the state is not the cutting edge of sanctified social change under the new covenant. Under the new covenant, the law of God is first written upon the hearts of people before it is written on the stone tablets of institutions and laws. To use more recent language, institutional reformation is downstream from spiritual revival. This implies that reforming civil laws is usually a long process that requires patient perseverance. Immediately and fully imposing godly civil laws on an ungodly society would require dictatorial powers. Because laws imposed in that way would not have a broad moral consensus within society, they would either be ignored or would have to be enforced with the oppressive power of a police state. Christian politicians should instead discern the extent to which God’s laws have been written on the heart of society as they seek every opportunity to make incremental improvements in law codes. The church’s role is to wage the spiritual warfare that conquers and transforms hearts; i.e., prayer, evangelism, discipleship, etc. In a spiral of social sanctification, progress in heart holiness both in depth and extent exerts a cultural influence that enables progress in civil statutory righteousness, which in turn confirms and encourages society’s growing ethical advances. Discipling a nation often has its ups and downs as it progresses through the stages of a fundamental paradigm shift.
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